Gilbert 'Gil' Jerome Schlesinger was the second son and youngest child of Samuel M and Celia Schlesinger, who practiced the Jewish faith. Gil never married and produced no known heirs.

Gil began flying missions with the 379th Heavy Bombardment Squadron, Kimbolton, England, on 10 Sep 1944. He served as the Pilot on this, his twenty-seventh mission, when his B-17G, #446140 'Miss Lace' encountered heavy flak over the target, the Brabag Synthetic Oil Plant, located just northeast of Zeitz, Germany. After one near explosion of flak, the burning plane lost its right wing and entered a vertical spiral. It broke into two sections: the tail/waist section, which landed near Threna, Germany, and the nose, which crashed into District 7 of the Oberholz Forest near Großpösna, Germany.

German citizens recovered partial and complete human remains and military identification tags for Gil and other crew members seated in the nose section of the plane from its forest debris field. The citizens of Großpösna placed five sets of remains in individual coffins, which were buried in their town cemetery. The US Army exhumed these remains in late June 1945.

The earlier presence of Gil's remains in the Großpösna Cemetery and the US Army identification of those remains as belonging to him was made solely upon the presence of his military identification tag, which the Germans had placed within a coffin with very limited partial human remains. A comparison of military dental records could not be completed since the remains lacked a skull or mandible.

At the request of Gil's parents, his identified remains were re-interred in the Adath Jeshurun Jewish Cemetery in West Roxbury, MA. His government issued headstone is located in Section 31, Lot 11, Grave 1.

Service

Events

Event	Location	Date
Born	Mattapan, Boston, MA, USA	8 September 1922
Killed in Action (KIA)	Großpösna, Germany	30 November 1944
Died	Großpösna, Germany	30 November 1944
Re-interrment	West Roxbury, Boston, MA, USA
Adath Jeshurun Jewish Cemetery, Section 31, Lot 11, Grave 1.
Buried	Großpösna, Germany